Tag Archives: Irish rail freight

Irish Rail makes good use of its quad track on the Cork Line in southwest suburban Dublin. Fast Intercity trains overtake slower moving all-stops passenger trains and the occasional freight.

The other day Colm O’Callaghan and I spent sometime documenting the action.

The sky was a tapestry of clouds with spells bright blue sky. In other words a typical Irish afternoon.

I made these views with my FujiFilm XT1 and 27mm pancake lens. Since top speed for passenger trains is 100 mph/160 kmph, I set the camera to 1/1000 second to freeze the action.

In addition to the digital photos I made a few select views on Fujichrome Provia with my old Nikon N90S and 135mm lens. Those remain in the camera.

Irish Rail ICRs work the Dublin-Westport train on the ‘down slow’ line.

A few minutes later a similar consist races by on the ‘down fast’ line. (Outside tracks are designated ‘fast’, inside tracks ‘slow’. Signaling is set up for directional running.

It was overcast when Irish Rail 218 raced by with a Mark4 set for Kent Station, Cork.

Speaking of Cork, I was on the phone to a Tracking the Light reader there when this ICR set with the new ‘blue doors’ worked up-road on the ‘up-slow’ (Up is toward Dublin; Down is away from Dublin). Previously I’ve reported on the change to Irish Rail’s ICRs with the addition of blue doors in place of green. I described these as ‘purple’ (they still look purple to me, but I’ve been informed the color is ‘blue’.)

Like this:

It was a bright overcast afternoon on 26 May 2005, when I photographed Irish Rail 077 leading an empty bubble cement train from Conyngham Road in Dublin looking toward platform 10 at Heuston Station.

I made this photo on Fujichrome slide film using my Nikon F3 with 180mm Nikkor ‘prime’ telephoto lens.

The telephoto compression has the effect of making the distant mountains seem closer while foreshortening the appearance of the cement train, which makes the individual four-wheel cement wagons seem even shorter than they were.

‘How about Monasterevin? If we go to the bridge over the Barrow the sun will be side on.’

And so it was. We caught a the parade of Saturday morning passenger trains (I posted one of these yesterday). But then it clouded over.

‘Not much use here when there’s a white sky.’

So we moved up to the station.

We didn’t wait there long before the headlight of an 071 appeared.

In short order we caught the IWT Liner passing on its way to Ballina, County Mayo.

After exposing a few colour slides, I made a burst of digital images using my FujiFilm XT1.

Owing to the high contrast scene, I opted to make some exposure and contrast adjustments in post processing. I did this within the parameters of the histogram and so retained all the detail captured in my RAW file.

Thursday morning on my way to breakfast, I made this photo of Irish Rail’s IWT Liner (Dublin to Ballina) passing Islandbridge Junction.

I timed my visit well and so only waited a few minutes for the freight to pass.

I’ve often photographed the IWT at this location, so this was really just an exercise.

Soft morning clouds made for some pleasant lighting, but also a post-processing quandary.

My FujiFilm XT1 allows me to simultaneously expose a Camera RAW file and a camera interpreted JPG. Among the features of the Fuji cameras is the ability to select a film-like colour profile for the Jpg.

In this instance I’ve opted for the Velvia profile, which closely emulates the colour and contrast of this popular slide film.

Another colour adjustment is the white balance control. In this situation I selected ‘auto white balance’, which means the camera interprets the color temperature.

When I processed the photos, I wanted to see if I could improve upon the camera JPG by making subtle changes to the Camera RAW file (which has ten times more information imbedded in it than the Jpg, but serves in the same role as a ‘negative’ and is intended for adjustment rather than uninterpreted presentation).

Below are three images; the a JPG from the unmodified Camera RAW, Camera created JPG, and my interpretation of the Camera RAW file.

This is an uninterpreted JPG made directly from the camera RAW file. (The RAW file is way too large for presentation on Tracking the Light.) I have not made any modifications to color profile, color balance, sharpness or exposure. This file is not really intended for presentation.

My in-camera JPG using the FujiFilm digitally applied Velvia colour profile with ‘auto white balance’ setting. I made no modifications to this file, except to scale it for presentation and add my watermark on the left.

This is my modified JPG. Starting with the Camera RAW, I imported this into Lightroom and implemented the following adjustments: I masked the sky using a digitally applied graduated filter and custom adjusted to increase highlight saturation, decrease highlight exposure, and make for cooler colour balance. On a global level, I made minor adjustments to white balance (warmed it up) and to contrast by lightening the shadow areas, reducing highlight exposure and altering the contrast curve. I also made select exposure adjustments to the pilot area on the locomotive. To match the Camera JPG’s perceived sharpness, I applied some nominal image sharpening. (This uses edge effects to make the photo appear sharper on the computer screen.) Got all that?

Incidentally, by using Lightroom, I can make adjustments to the RAW files without permanently changing the original data. This is very important since it would be a mistake to modify the original file. That would be like adding colour dyes or bleach to your original slide to ‘improve’ the result.

This has been an interesting week for locomotives working Irish Rail’s IWT Liner (International Warehousing & Transport container train Dublin to Ballina). Most of the time a standard green and sliver class 201 leads the train. But over the last week, a variety of differently painted locomotives have had this assignment.

For the last decade or so, Irish Rail has focused largely on its passenger operations. These days long distance passenger trains are dominated by fleets of Rotem-built InterCity Rail cars (ICRs), with locomotive-powered trains only working Dublin-Cork (class 201 diesels with Mark 4 push-pull) and Dublin-Belfast (class 201 diesels with De Dietrich push-pull). To the casual observer, it might seem that all the Irish Rail trains are ICRs. Certainly they seem to be everywhere.

Last Thursday and Friday, David Hegarty & I visited midland counties in search of freight trains. These are good days to be out, since Irish rail fields a variety of scheduled freight on its route to County Mayo via Portarlington, Athlone, and Roscommon. This single-track line has a rock and roll profile across undulating countryside.

It’s gorse-season, and the gold-tinged blooming bushes works well with Irish Rail’s ‘safety yellow’ on the front of most trains. Getting the sun out is an added bonus. One minute there’s bright sun, the next its lashing rain. Sometime, I didn’t have to wait that long. They call it Spring. It’s as good an excuse as any.

Second IWT liner from Dublin to Ballina, north (west) of Portarlington on the branch to Athlone. Thursdays is a busy day for freight in Ireland, we caught six freight moves on April 25, 2013. Irish Rail 234 is the highest number 201 class diesels. The next day we photographed it again at Clara, Co. Offaly. Canon 7D with 20mm lens.

Ballina to Dublin IWT approaches the station at Clara on Friday April 26, 2013. That’s 234, again. Lumix LX3 photo.

Not so lucky with the twice weekly DFSD liner. The rain caught me here. Luckily I had an Opel for shelter! This is from the main road between Athlone and Knockcroghery. Canon 7D with 200mm f2.8 lens.

This sounded great; its the down IWT liner roaring along with a 1970s-era class 071 near the former station of Donamon (west of Roscommon). Canon 7D with 40mm pancake lens.

Last train of the day; the empty timber from Waterford near Donamon. After we caught this train, we were given good advice on an even nicer location a couple of miles further west. We’ll be back! Canon 7D with 100mm f2.0 lens.

In addition to these digital photos exposed with my Canon 7D and Lumix LX-3, I also exposed a couple of rolls of film, including the first roll of Fuji Velvia 50 that’s been in my Canon EOS 3 in about six years. When using slide film, I usually work with 100 ISO stock. The Velvia 50 is an accident, and I’ll be curious to see how those slides turn out. Thanks to Noel Enright for logistical advice!

Ballina to Dublin IWT approaches the station at Clara on Friday April 26, 2013. That’s 234, again. Lumix LX3 photo.

This morning (February 21, 2013), Dublin dawned frosty and dull. On Thursdays, Irish Rail runs a pair of intermodal freight liners between Dublin port and Ballina, County Mayo for shipping company IWT (International Warehousing and Transport). Today, the first of the two IWT Liners (as the freights are generally known) departed the yards at the North Wall just after 9:31 am. As it was led by a common 201-class diesel and the weather remained especially dull outside, I opted to let it pass undocumented, as I’ve often photographed this train in nice light. The second train, however, was running with Irish Rail 074, one of the 1970s-era General Motors-built 071 class diesels, which is of greater interest to me. So this afternoon, my friend Colm O’Callaghan and I went to a favored spot near Clondalkin in the western suburbs at milepost 4 ¼ , where we waited patiently in Baltic conditions. While the temperature was a balmy 3 degrees Celsius (about 37 Fahrenheit), the biting wind and general dampness made it feel much colder. Just ten days ago I was out in much colder conditions at Palmer, Massachusetts (USA), where it was about -17 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit), and it hadn’t felt so bad. There’s nothing like a raw Irish day to cut through you.

Clondalkin is on the short stretch of quad-track mainline between Cherry Orchard (no cherries near the place!) and Hazelhatch that was expanded from the old double-line at the end of the Celtic Tiger-era boom years. The slight curve at the end of a long tangent in an area of industrial estates makes for an interesting setting to capture trains on the roll. However, it isn’t the nicest place to stand around exposed on a cold day. Complicating photography are high palisade fences and other fencing on the bridge that requires some creative solutions to overcome. While waiting for the down IWT liner, we witnessed the usual parade of passenger trains, all running to time, on the new Irish Rail time table.

The mildly overcast conditions encouraged us to make a cross-lit view of the liner from the north side of the line, rather than the more traditional three-quarter angle from the south side. I like the north side view on a dull day because it offers a better angle on the quad track and signaling.